FEAR!

I want to talk about FEAR, but I can't because I'm too scared.


Only joking! But seriously, Fear is no joking matter. Unless you are scared of jokes, then it is. Look I don't really want to get bogged down in all this, I just want to discuss the two types of Fear. There is Fear of Real Stuff and there is Irrational Fear. Which is worse?


I will give you an example of each of the two types and maybe you can decide for me, I am too in the thrall of my fears to make any judgements. That's what fear does, it makes you crazy if you live in it for too long.


Anyways, here is the first example:


You are riding your cutting-edge two-wheeled pedalec bicycle along the A36 coming out of Bath. It is raining in great black sheets, ice cold in your eyes. Cars continue to speed on their way home past you as if you weren't there, and you're all alone and yet surrounded by people at the same time. A bus overtakes you with not enough space between it and the car coming the other way. It pulls over and over, closing the gap you are in until hardly any road is left for you. You look up, almost in slow motion at the blank faces staring down at you from the greasy windows, the sick yellow glare of the buses light illuminating every line and crease surrounding their dead black eyes. You think, these can't be the last people to see me alive, please no! You think of your family and how they will cope without you, will they ever be able to put the TV on? That is when the crushing fear hits you like a harpoon ploughing deep into the flesh of a white whale. What if they can cope fine without me? 


That was fear of real stuff. Scary, huh? Now here is an example of Irrational Fear:


You are riding down the canal path at night and it is black, and eerie. Sounds from the trees and hedgerows are magnified into strange muffled calls and whispered words. You can see well in front of you due to your light, which is awesome and cost you almost 300 quid, but outside of your white hot beam is total dark. You think you can hear something rushing along behind you and you furtively glance over your shoulder to see what can be there. You can see nothing, no light of another person on a bicycle, nothing, but you can feel it is there. You pedal harder, but an image flashes into your brain of something following you, something with over-large eyes and sharp, bared teeth, a mockery of the human form, going ever faster, matching your frantic speed with ease, riding on a bike that is better than yours! THE HORROR!

Who knows what horrors lurk in the dark places of the earth?

So which is worse? All I know is that, if it gets too much, irrational or real, on either route, I swap to the other and instantly feel better. I could save myself from a spider by jumping off a cliff, and be gladly dragged from a cliff edge by a helpful spider. Weird.

CAR

Something happened to me today that very rarely happens.


I went to work in one of those car things. Yeah, me, Person on a Bicycle was Person in a Car for once.


Now, I will never claim to be a good driver (I have a habit of mounting kerbs and it took me five times to pass my driving test. On the last time the tester said that she was passing me because, and I repeat, because; I was "not great at driving, but you're probably not going to kill anyone."), but nothing, nothing could have prepared me for what lay ahead. I didn't get attacked by a dog. I didn't get sworn at. I didn't see Weird Shit. I didn't even feel like I was going to die every time something passed me. For one day I was a god, and it was going to feel good. I can see why people like doing this car thing, it's like you are still in your house, but travelling to work all the same.

The sky was a troubled grey, with wind and rain battering my metal and glass shell, but it was I who was going to have a good laugh at all those Losers on a Bicycle for a change. But hold on, they were over taking me! What the funbells? I was stuck in traffic jams and those arrogant sons of beach-balls on two wheels were over-taking me! Can I not go in any form of transport where someone doesn't speed past me like a maniac who has just escaped from the scene of their latest stab-athon? 


I tell you, by the end of the day I wanted to rip off my windscreen wiper and ram it into the lycra-ed chest of the next smarmy glow-in-the-dark pants who tried to slide, ever-so-easily past me.

ARE YOU A CONSIDERATE ROAD/CANAL PATH USER OR ARE YOU A FUDGING CLINTHAMMER QUESTIONNAIRE.

Hello! Today I am doing a multiple choice questionnaire because it is easy and fills up loads of space. Don't be frightened of what you may find about yourself, have a go!


1.You are watching that effin Noddy CGI cartoon crap on a Sunday morning because your son has turned it over from Match of the Day 'cause he says that football is just a pile of boring monkey cack, and Noddy has just driven his little stupid car too fast past Bumpy Dog and splashed that corrupt cop PC Plod with mud. Do you think Noddy should:
A: Stop the car and see if Bumpy is Ok and offer to give Plod a good polish.
B: Flip them all The Bird and shout out of his window, "HAR!HAR! Get out of my way you loser! Do you want me to run you over?!" (actual quote)
C: U-Turn and finish the job.


2. Look at the photo below. Go on, look at it, LOOK AT IT!

Do you think:

A: HOLY SHEEEEEEET! Poor Noddy and Bumpy!

B: HAR!HAR! Stupid effing Noddy and that wonker of a mutt got what was coming to them! YEE-HAAAAR!

C: That's a start. Now finish the job.

3. You're on your push bike going around a blind curve and that ass hat Noddy in a car decides he needs to be past you now, do you:

A: Carry on riding regardless of what other road users wish to do, even though you are slowing everyone down, you selfish muthafurger.

B: Veer wildly all over the road in fear and terror screaming at the top of your lungs "Hit me! Please hit me! I want to die! I can't stand the horror any longer! YAAAAARRRGGG!" (actual quote)

C: Stop your pathetically outmoded form of transport in the middle of the road and start punching stuff.

4. You see Noddy walking Bumpy Dog down the canal path. Do you:

A: Slow your bicycle to let them pass allowing Bumpy Dog to totally eff you up with his rabid munchers whilst Noddy laughs, the bell on this hat ringing like the bells at your funeral.

B: Speed up, take the dog out first and then run Noddy into the black greasy water of the canal.

C: Immediately get yourself sectioned again.

If you scored mainly A's, you are a total wuss who will not last 2 seconds out there before some company car driving sociopath makes you his latest trophy.

If you scored mainly B's you are a perfect road user, well suited to today's busy lifestyle. This is one rat race you're going to win!

If you scored mainly C's, please turn yourself in. Life and Death is not for you to decide, unless that is what you want, then that's fine with me! Please spare me, I want to live!

Remember, the roads are "the Country's arteries", you can tell that by the blood all over them.

ALL IN MY HEAD, EH?

Last night, as I was nearing the very end of the canal path part of my journey home, where it joins Winsley Hill, an incident happened that falls into the categories Dog Attack and Weird Shit.


The sky was dark, probably due to the sun being blocked out by the Earth itself (that's weird for a start), and the path at this point becomes very narrow, with a tangled hedgerow on one side, and the bottomless pit of miasmic blackness that is the canal, on the other. I have a very, very bright light on the front of my utterly futuristic bike, so even though the night was oppressively dark, my path home was totally illuminated like something lit up with a bike light. The path seemed empty, I say seemed!


Suddenly to the hedgerow side, a savage growling and gnashing of dagger-filled jaws broke out, and the sound of a hound from my twisted nightmares thudding after me came to my shocked and frightened and over-large ears. I could not see my hellish assailant though, due to the inky blackness behind me.


Now, after my previous Dog Attack by Snappy the Staff from the Dog Dispenser (see an earlier post, can't remember when, the days merge into one when you get no sleep), I have taken to wearing a dog whistle around my neck to help protect me from dog-based maulings, but this creates a dilemma: do I reach for my pathetic whistle and to go on the offensive or do I use my hands to change gear and outrun my tormentor?


All I can say is don't try to do what I did: Both.


I ended up with my head bouncing off my handle bars and actually slowing down as my unseen tormentor closed on me. Ahead was the turn off for the road that I needed to take, there I would need to stop and get off my bike to get up to the road, presenting a perfect opportunity for the creature to take some chunks.


But it didn't. 


Why? Because it had vanished! I know that is hard to believe, I hardly know whether to trust myself in my current mental state, but it is true! I scrambled up to the road bridge over the canal and shone my Super-trooper style light beam down the path: nothing! Suddenly I was filled with horror, fear and despair as I realised that I had most probably been chased by the ghost of a dog that may or may not have died on this exact spot 10 years ago to the second or some sort of spooky shit like that!

ACTUAL MIND-PHOTO OF MY ASSAILANT, EXTRACTED FROM MY HEAD BY COMEDY HYPNOTHERAPIST DERREN BROWN.

ACCENTS

Now, this is going to sound a bit weird. 


When riding along the canal path I like to do accents. Irish, Scottish, general Northern, German, vaguely Eastern European nobility, any accent I feel is fitting for the situation. I have discovered that when you pass someone walking the canal and give a cheery "Hello!", or "Tanks!" as they let you pass, you get a varying level of respect depending on the person and accent used.

The Crusty Jugglers who live on the boats get the full Irish. They generally despise people on bicycles (and after the way I've seen some foolish fools zoom along with no regard for life itself I'm not surprised) so they get a terrible, verging-on-racist  Irish impersonation. Result: total politeness and unearned respect. Don't ask me why it works, but I does.

Dodgy groups of youths get  a cliché, no-nonsense Yorkshire  man, Workmen: Cockney, Drunks: Scottish, Little old Ladies walking dogs: Over-the-top Gary Oldman style Dracula (just for fun), Middle-class Joggers: German. One accent I never do is North American, sorry guys, but for some reason no-one seems to find you lot agreeable.

I know it sounds mad, but it keeps me sane. I think.

ACTUAL PHOTO.

OVERVIEW MAP

   I thought it would be nice today to give the unfortunate reader of this bleurg an Overview and Map of my journey to and fro, form work and home. I will not be giving away any personal information that would allow someone or something to closely track and hunt me down. 
    I most certainly will not be showing you where I work,

who I work for,

and where I live,

with these people:

I have clearly labelled the Map with a Key to a few key incidents that have occurred during my four years of doing this trip and I will be updating it if anything else happens.

THE TAIL OF ANGLE GRINDER

   When I left work the other night it was a foggy, murky, spectral scene that met my naive eyes. I knew I needed to proceed with utter, total caution, 100% pure, uncut caution. The sounds of the night were strangely muffled, creating a dream-like, almost underwater scene before me down Brassmill Lane. 


As I pedalled slowly, slowly down the hellish road I started to draw near to Flatso the Squirrel's (see yesterday's horrific story) spot of silent vigil. Suddenly behind me, I heard the sudden roar of a car travelling rapidly in my direction. The man driving must have been in some sort of emergency, I think his wife must have gone into labour and he was rushing to the Hospital to be by her swollen sides as many men chose to do nowadays. He sped past me, I swerved to get out of his way, so not to slow him down, but I stupidly hit the curb and almost fell off, silly me! 

Suddenly the car hit a patch of clear air, hideously and dangerously giving him total vision of the road. A cat ran out from nowhere, which was actually a garden by the side of the road, and without a thought to anyone else's saftey it went under the wheels of the car. The car drove on for a while then stopped. The cat, coming out the other side, did something that filled me with horror, fear and despair. It launched silently into the air like someone had kicked it with rocket boots, landed and silently proceeded to describe ever faster, tightening circles. I could hardly beleive my cynical eyes as it ran madly in a whirlwind of doom. It then bolted like a cat on fire to a parked car and hid beneath.


I crouched down on all fours and took a look at the moggy. It's baleful eyes shone out at me, and I could see with hideous primeval  horror that the felines' tail had been bent into some pretty hilarious angles. As I attempted to coax it out with sweet words of comfort I heard a voice above me say, "Alright? I don't think I hit it."


I looked up at a man who I instantly took pity on. His tight curly mullet and denim jacket melting the permafrost around my cold, black heart. "I think maybe you did," I mumbled, "but I think it'll live. Shouldn't you go to the Hospital?"


He looked at me with an expression on his face that was a mix between confusion and fear, much like Angle Grinder, the cat under the car that had now scampered off.


"Nah, I'm fine...." he barely croaked, backed away and got into his car and sped off.


I have that effect on people.

Poor fwightened twisted pussy. RECONSTRUCTION.

FLATSO

I saw something on my way to work the other day that filled me with almost total horror, fear and despair.


I have grown unfortunately accustomed to seeing the small things of this world cruelly, but justly squished on the roads (after all, they really shouldn't be there, they pay no Road Tax after all), their bloody and torn bone-heaps littering my journeys. Avoiding their effed up carcasses can be quite a hazard. Many is the time I've quietly chuckled to myself as I swerve to bypass skidding in badger brains only to get in the busy traffic's way. "Watch out, wouldn't want me to join my flatmates on the road there!" I guffaw  to myself like an insane man.


Unquestionably, the most horrific of these victims to stupidity was one little fella I saw near to where I work down Brassmill Lane in Bath. I could see something small coming out of the road in front of me. Yes, coming out of the road! A gaping mouth (that is a bit of a theme with these guys), and arms outstretched, it was a squirrel that looked as if it was rising from the bowels of Hell itself. Squirrels are kind of grey coloured, as their name suggests I guess, and this chump was no exception. In fact, kind of road coloured. His back half had been so flattened that it looked like part of the road. Like some tarmac-based terminator reforming and then stopping reforming due to death, little nut-kins was frozen in a pose of not-quite-leaping to safety.


And all I could think about as looked down at his sad, confused, frightened, hellish eyes was, "That's one squirrel who's lost his nuts."

More horror than I can cope with. RECONSTRUCTION.

MERCEDES NO-CLASS

I recently had to travel on my trusty brand new state of the art push bike to my Dad's house in Melksham from my home in Winsley.

I decided that the scenic route would be best as going on the main roads has certain perils that I won't go into here.  Part of the journey goes on the bridal-path past Great Chalfield Manor. Such a beautiful, but deeply rutted and muddy-puddled roadlet to traverse. The cosy tree-lined path opens up to wide, exposed fields at one point where it then resembles a WW1 trench.

Imagine my utter horror, despair and fear when I saw a Mercedes S Class coming towards me. Anyone unfamiliar with these penis extensions I have included a picture of one below. Now, we are talking a very muddy path here and I was very concerned that the man driving the car had got lost and now his shiny lovely automobile was getting very dirty. Very. He showed no sign of slowing though, in fact his headlights came on full beam and he seemed to accelerate towards me.

SITE OF HAPPENING

Something must have got him spooked.

I pulled over as far as I could to let him pass. I thought I would get a cheery wave of thanks for my actions, but all I received was an impassive, stoney glare. What had terrified this man to the extent that he would carelessly drive towards me like I was a school kid at a zebra crossing?

He drew alongside of me and proceeded to splash down into some large mud pools, the contents of which, luckily I stopped going over the verge (I can't abide a messy verge) with my legs and body parts. He looked down at me and then drove on at speed. 

I scanned the horizon to see if there was anything in pursuit, and to my hideous horror I saw something that filled me with horror of a hideous kind. 

Now, I can't be 100% sure of what I saw, I may have been mistaken, but outlined against the brooding sky was the outline of an enormous deers head and antlers! 

Other people have pointed out to me that this could well have been an old lightening-hit tree in the field, but I can see no other explanation for the driver's actions.

It must have been the ghost of the deer from yesterday's post still pursuing his earthly car-based murder supplier!

RECONSTRUCTION

DEER ME.

The dark nights can hide some surprises.


The crisp air, fogged with moisture, clouds many mysteries. Things in the trees whisper secrets to each other and the hedgerows are alive with eyes, watching, always watching. Sometimes, something brakes this cover and that's when the shit really goes down. 

  
One such starless night I was pedalling my merry way up Winsley Hill when I rounded a corner and noticed a large dark lump on the road ahead. It was approximately the size of a small humanoid, but as I drew closer I knew this was no human I had ever seen. 


Out of the strange silhouette I started to describe two large shiny black eyes, a large wet nose, and a tongue lolling from it's open mouth. It was a deer. A dead deer. A dearly departed. I stopped next to it, and looked down on it's corpse. I knew it was dead due to the way the top half was facing in a different direction to the bottom. 


I decided to drag the deer out of the road so it would cease to be an obstacle to all the important people in their cars going on their speedy way home to have arguments and recriminations with their loved ones. The deer was heavy and still warm, but I grabbed a leg and dragged it off the road and onto the verge. It was tough going, and I was grateful for the breeze the cars racing past just inches from my head, brought to my sweaty brow from the exertion.


Once the venison was off the road, I got back to my bike and pottered off. Four seconds later something rushed past my shoulder only a hairs breadth from me, almost knocking me from my metal steed. 


Now, I'm not completely sure, I may have been mistaken, but was it the spirit of the dead deer roaring past me on it's way to antler heaven, or just some careless cakesucking fudwit in a 4x4? 


I will never know. 


Hmmm, spoooooky.

CORMO-RANT

Riding down the canal path today I stopped when I saw a Cormorant atop a dead tree.

It's wings were spread wide drying in the sun. 

As it stared down at me, looking like some huge black fell creature I was filled with horror and despair. 

Then it lost it's grip slightly, nearly fell off and I instantly felt better.

STAFFY AND THE DOG DISPENSER

There is nothing quite like travelling down the canal path, with the sunshine shimmering off the water and the birds staying at a safe distance in the trees. 


The gorgeous mud and majestic rocky peaks of the path itself make it a joyous experience. The wind in my hair, the rain on my back, the flies in my eyes. 


Yesterday as I was admiring the various canal boats with their colourful owners when I passed one that I like to call The Dog Dispenser. It was the turn of a Staffordshire Bull Terrier to be disgorged, the golden light playing on it's glossy coat and teeth. 


It greeted me with a happy growl and proceeded to lightly pound alongside me. On every down stroke on my pedal the hound playfully attempted to lock on with it's mouthful of biker maulers. 


Oh, I could have cried with joy with the pure feeling of being alive, if my soul hadn't actually been filled with horror, fear and despair. 


As the little scamp made one last lunge at my leg meat I thought, "Go on take a bite you psychotic piece of shat, it'll be your fugging funeral! I'll probably end up in a hospital bed having my hair stroked by a sympathetic (and buxom) nurse, whilst your crap-filled head will be developing a close relationship with a police marksman's bullet!"

RABBIT IN THE HATELIGHTS

As I was riding home last night up Winsley Hill, and a car overtook me on the blind turn at the top unable to see that a car was coming in the other direction, I saw a curious thing.

As the road space left to me rapidly diminished and I quickly made my peace with the universe, I had a momentary vision of a Rabbit by the roadside illuminated in the headlight's glare. It's eyes flashed like fire as it's shaking body quivered ready to run into the road. 

It was at that point that I thought, "Go on run into the road, you crazy bastard! I dare you! I will cut you in half if you get in my motherhugging way! I don't care if I orphan your thirty five children! You mean nothing to me, do you hear? Nothing! NOTHIIIIING!"

SWANS

This morning as I was locking up my bike at work, I was surprised to hear a strange whirring and honking noise in sky.

Looking up I saw five massive swans flapping in formation on some sort of low level migration route. Maybe they were a family group, all together heading for warmer climes and sunnier feeding grounds. Long necks outstretched, calling encouragement to each other, they made their slow, but graceful way across the grey misty firmament.

All I could think of as they careered dangerously out of view was how do those fat bastards stay in the air?

DREARY DEER STORY.

I was riding down the canal the other day on my way to work, when a deer came out onto the path ahead of me.

To my surprise it went into the water and swam across. I drew level with it and watched it's ungainly paddle and then it's scramble up the other side. 

It stood there shaking itself dry, then it noticed me and gracefully leapt a hedge. It turned and peeked at me, snorted in what I think was derision, and wandered off. 

What a fugging a-hole.